VIDEO: Desso pitch installed at Wembley

Friday, 01, April, 2011

During June 2010, Desso Sports Systems arrived at the Stadium and used the latest pitch reinforcement technology to strengthen the playing surface.

And it was an impressive sight to see the three machines working for nearly two weeks to insert over 48,000km of synthetic thread into the turf – that’s 8,000km more than the circumference of the earth.

FATV cameras were on hand during the whole installation to see how work on the Desso Grassmaster reinforced natural grass progressed. Click here to watch the video of the machines at work.

Desso Grassmaster Technician Kees Ophof explained a little bit more about the process.

“It’s strengthening up the whole field so it’s going to be more durable to play on. You get more benefits out of the whole package,” he told FATV.

“The machines operate automatically when you put it on run. Each needle has a spacing of two centimetres and the steps it makes is two centimetres also.

“There are 88 spools on each side of the machines, each strand goes about 20cm into the ground. Above the ground it’s about two and a half centimetres.

“It takes about ten or eleven days, that’s three machines working 20-22 hours a day.”

He added: “We’ve done Aston Villa, Manchester City, Real Madrid, Monaco, the Emirates, too much to remember all the names.”

Each ‘strand’ of synthetic grass has six blades, so amongst the ‘real’ Wembley grass, there 120million blades of Desso Grassmaster, which have been inserted into the ground by the machines long needles.

Roger Maslin, Managing Director of Wembley National Stadium Ltd said: "The pitch is at the heart of the stadium and football is our number one priority.‪ However, Wembley Stadium is a multi-use venue and developing our event calendar with a range of football, rugby, sports and entertainment events is key to the success of our business plan.‪

"The crucial balance for us is to maintain a good quality playing surface for football, whilst at the same time fulfilling our business plan commitments and maintaining our heritage as a multi-event venue."